Hacker News Reader

Comment by chungy | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's just me, but the right thing for Comcast to do is try to provide a better product. Competition is healthy, legislation is illness.

View on HN

Apparently corporations take the path of least resistance - it's cheaper to 'influence' the big state instead of competing in an open market. Now the question is: will increasing the power of the state make such behavior less or more lucrative?

> will increasing the power of the state make such behavior less or more lucrative?

More lucrative because the state has a monopoly on the legal use of force. Legislation is cheap compared to real innovation. Furthermore, legislation is backed by the legal system which prevents the cash flow to Comcast from decreasing in this case. The legal system is fueled by tax money not Comcast's money. Comcast is benefiting from an instrument created and paid for by the citizenry to create an unfair balance of power in their own favor because the legislators which supposedly represent the people created the laws which are unjust to the people and are no longer representing the people but are instead representing their own pocketbook which is being stuffed by Comcast. As this trend continues we may experience an influx of non traditional political opponents similar to what we saw in the national elections one year ago.

If Comcast can hijack our democracy and wield the state's power against public interest, then what's to stop it from hijacking our democracy to increase the state's power in the first place? How does creating a city-owned utility in any way change Comcast's lobbying position? Monopolies can and do form and persist without government intervention. The textbook example of this is utilities.

Finally, if creating a city-owned utility is beneficial to Comcast, why are they vehemently against it?

Arguably nothing. Look at Comcast's ad campaigns on twitter to promote its own version of net neutrality. Fortunately for now, it seems that there are more powerful institutions in directing the public dialogue.

Competing in an open market would mean they actually need to be competitive. Why be competitive when you can shell out cash to the vending machine, get guaranteed business, and not break a sweat doing it?

Of course it is. If they'd have won this, it would have cost <$400,000.

Small change compared to upgrading infrastructure.

Did you misinterpret? Obviously it's not just you. No consumer would be happier if Comcast didn't try to provide a better product. The point is that judging by their past actions, Comcast won't do that.

No, he's agreeing with everybody that Comcast acts shitty when they do this.

I think the comment you're replying to understands that. I interpreted it as them calling out the fake bravery of saying "maybe it's just me" before sharing a very common and widely-held opinion.

They did in Chattanooga, but not before trying to sue the city four times:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezpk77/chattanoog...

A couple shorter articles on the same topic:

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas...

https://consumerist.com/2017/04/11/comcast-introduces-gigabi...

So only after they had exhausted all other options.

It's the american way.

You can’t “compete” with a municipal service. How many competing options do you have for your water or sewer or trash pickup? It’s a reasonable argument that broadband should be provided municipally. But cloaking it in the guise of “competition” is disingenuous.

There's competition in another sense. I'm east of Fort Collins where there's a pretty significant anti-government streak: but if Comcast manages to suck more than most government services they may have a problem.

They don't have to be the best or even only free-market option: they have to avoid pissing off their customer base enough that people vote for a municipal option. Not sure they're doing very well at that...

You can get gigabit east of Fort Collins: http://web.wigginstel.com/service-area/ http://www.nunntel.com/ Not in Fort Collins, though.

Thanks - didn't know about that! Doesn't cover my area, though :)

In the town of West Henrietta, there actually is competition for trash pickup as it is not provided by the town or county.

> You can’t “compete” with a municipal service.

Sure you can.

The inherent costs to provide services is similar, but Comcast can amortize costs over a larger customer base. If Comcast is at all competent (a huge if!) then they should have overall lower costs, even taking (probably reduced) profits into account.

Customer service needs to be provided, a mailing center to send out hardware, a billing system, technicians and installers need to be trained and dispatched, payroll for all said employees, and all the other costs of running a business that should, in theory, scale to Comcast's advantage.

And of course Comcast can offer quicker upgrades in service. By bringing resources to bear, they should be able to iterate on technology faster than a municipal provider can.

Comcast also has the advantages of bundling services, another way to recoup costs and compete vs the municipal provided service.

A well ran national company with should be able to put up one heck of a good free market fight going up against a municipality. The real question becomes, is Comcast able to put up that fight?

Municipal services usually don’t have to turn a profit, since they can make up the shortfall with tax revenue. You’re missing that crucial point. You can’t effectively compete against someone who can operate at a loss in perpetuity.

I don’t know what the specifics are in this case, but if they allow the municipal service to be funded by tax revenue, then it’s incredibly unfair.

> Municipal services usually don’t have to turn a profit, since they can make up the shortfall with tax revenue. You’re missing that crucial point. You can’t effectively compete against someone who can operate at a loss in perpetuity.

This is more of a problem of how things look like they are funded.

Customers still pay the same price, but instead of $60 for Internet service, it may be $50 for Internet and $10 somewhere else. Or of course the city can tax the heck out of one subgroup of people and redistribute the funds.

I'd actually be OK-ish with a law saying that municipal broadband has to be self funded after initial rollout, I imagine that would maintain sufficient competition.

>Customers still pay the same price, but instead of $60 for Internet service, it may be $50 for Internet and $10 somewhere else. Or of course the city can tax the heck out of one subgroup of people and redistribute the funds.

No, in your scenario, customers pay $50, and EVERYONE pays $10, including those who use a private competitor.

The customers of a private competitor that also gets $60 of revenue per customer, would actually be paying $70. $60 for their own service, and $10 to subsidize the municipal service.

And even if you have some magic source of tax revenue that is not the citizens (or heavily tax some subgroup as you suggest), the municipal service is still charging $10 less to get the same revenue as the private service.

> No, in your scenario, customers pay $50, and EVERYONE pays $10, including those who use a private competitor.

That is why I proposed the municipal broadband system be self funding, preventing any market distortion.

I admit I wasn't clear about it, and you are correct that in a scenario of anything other than 100% of the population switching over to the municipal provider, a subsidy effect does occur.

Yeah, I'm curious what the actual price per customer will be. Comcast may still offer lower prices.

> the right thing for Comcast to do

Are you saying that as a Comcast shareholder? If so, bravo. I wish more of them thought the same way.

A government created by the people for the people must limit the influence of corporations on the fabric of society and itself. As for-profit corporations necessarily do whatever possible to increase shareholder value the only limiting factor remains the threat of violence by social mandate. In other words The Government. Without this limiting factor we will witness an increasing scale of abuses and tragedies of the commons in the pursuit of ever-higher shareholder value.

Don't forget corporations are people too! /s

It seems to me that it is unrealistic to expect a company -- even one as big as Comcast -- to compete with the government, with the power of eminent domain and subsidizing costs with local taxes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com